Isn’t it wonderful when Washington, D.C.’s outstanding classical and avant-garde theater scene gets shared with its older cousin city — New York City. Between them, Joy Zinoman, Holly Twyford, Ted van Griethuysen, and Philip Goodwin have won dozens of Helen Hayes Awards for outstanding artistic achievement in the theater. (D.C.’s Shakespeare Theater won, this year, that other rather important theater award, the Tony, for best “regional” theater.)

Shouldn’t sequenza21 and soundingbeckett credit the Dina Koston and Roger Shapiro Fund for New Music of the Library of Congress for initiating the concept and commissions behind this Beckett project?

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Even the highly conservative Washington National Opera is now feeding off some of the energy of D.C.’s outstanding classical and experimental theater scene — under funding from local D.C. billionaire David Rubenstein and his wife, Alice; and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (of New York City), with its music, theater, and opera savy cultural staff.